Politics As Usual: Ben Carson and Pumpkin Spice Politics

Well, it’s November again. The election still looks like an elaborate Mad TV sketch, Christians are boycotting Starbucks because their Yuletide game isn’t strong enough, and due to racial tensions on campus, almost an entire football team refused to play unless the President of a University resigned. It kind of feels like a series of vignettes directed by Mike Judge and Spike Lee.

I tried to leave the candidates alone this month, but Dr. Ben Carson is just so god damn interesting. Let’s start with what seems like a blind attempt to appeal to the young black voter (or maybe he just can’t see because he’s squinting). He’s out on “da streetz,” telling tales of a violent past, complete with assault with a deadly weapon, and robbery at yep, you guessed it, Popeye’s fucking Chicken! If that’s not bizarre enough for you, Dr. BC called upon Atlanta based-rapper, Mogul, to pen him a rap song for his radio ad. The results were, well, interesting.

All of this does nothing but show us how out of touch Dr. Carson really is. His campaign team should get him a diamond Jesus chain for Christmas if they really want him to appeal to the kids.

Wait, can I even say Christmas right now?

Should we say “Holidays” instead? Is there a war on Christmas right now? Starbucks decided to flip the script, if you will, and keep their cups plain red for the holidays, and now the Christian community is in an uproar because they believe that Starbucks is trying to remove Christ from Christmas, or Christmas from Christmas, or … Christ from the coffee? I don’t fucking know. It’s not really clear at this point, but apparently it’s of great importance because Donald Trump weighed in and suggested that people boycott Starbucks.

Yeah right! That’s like suggesting that people boycott Twitter, or boycott peeing. Not gonna happen. People need that shit, more than they think they need Jesus, which means that on the way to bible study they’ll still stop to pick up that Pumpkin Spiced whatever, write Merry Christmas on it themselves, and thank God for it before they take a sip. It’s just a bullshit story to distract us from the really weird stuff like the whole debacle that’s going on over at the University of Missouri.

A group of black players on the Missouri football team threatened to stop participating in football activities until University President Tim Wolfe stepped down from his position. This comes after months of protests from students over the administration’s handling of racial incidents *cue Public Enemy’s “Fight The Power.”*

The University ignored the protests for Wolfe to step down until 32 black players said “Oh, word? Ok, we ain’t playin’ then.” Moments after, Tim Wolfe stepped down, and The Chancellor followed suit. Possibly the most fucked up thing about this is that it wasn’t the discontented black students who had suffered racist incidents that caused them to peace out, it was the fact that they wouldn’t be playing fucking football. Maybe every marginalized minority in this country should just threaten to boycott Superbowl viewership if they want to be heard? Because there’s nothing on this cold, dead planet more important than 12 scantily clad men regularly tackling each other over balls.

It didn’t really matter that racial epithets were yelled at the Student Body President by students off campus, or that a Swastika made of poop was smeared in a bathroom of a residence hall (way to hammer the point home). That wasn’t enough to address the racism … but the football thing was.

Now, I don’t know much about Missouri, other than the fact that there are 5,988,972 people there and only 693,391 of them are black. I also know that black students make up only 7 percent of Mizzou’s student body, so I can kind of gauge what it might feel like to be a black person on that campus. Kind of like what it might feel like to be a white person at Louis Farrakhan’s birthday party, minus the hors d’oeuvre, so the racial tension makes sense.

But will Tim Wolfe stepping down even mean anything? Because apparently the University of Missouri, like other universities in our great nation, has a history of racism that long predates its current leadership. Immediately after the resignation of the System President and Chancellor, there were reports of Klu Klux Klan presence on the campus, but that turned out to be a hoax. So, I don’t really know what to make of this whole thing. There seems to be a few holes in the story. But will this deter future enrollment of black students? If so, do they win? Or will black students attend anyway and have to endure four years of racism to get a degree in Botany? Who knows?

I definitely don’t, but I hope we can figure out this whole racism shit soon, because I’m sick of thinking about it. You’d think that having black politicians like Barack Obama and Ben Carson in the public eye would dissuade people from this fuckery, but nope. Ben Carson, with his Popeye’s story, artisanally curated rap numbers and insane Egypt theories, is not the black role model we need to make steps in a positive direction. That brings me to an important point. Racism is more systematic a problem that can be fixed by having a black POTUS. He’s wonderful fodder for impressions though.